Wet weather seen in colour­ful glory

Rain holds a spe­cial place in the hearts of North West­ern­ers, and the re­cent deluge’s pos­i­tive ef­fect is ev­i­dent when talk­ing to peo­ple at the mo­ment.

Kar­ratha had its wettest day in more than a decade last week, with 210.6mm buck­et­ing down in 24 hours to 9am on Fe­bru­ary 9.

It was the sec­ond-wettest day on record for Kar­ratha, pipped by the 212.4mm down­pour on Jan­uary 10, 2006.

With 372.2mm fall­ing to Fe­bru­ary 10 in Kar­ratha, 2017 has been wet­ter less than two months in than 2016 (224.4mm), 2015 (185.2mm) and 2014 (221mm) each were for the whole year.

It is al­ready the 10th wettest year on record, but we will need plenty more to reach the 855mm recorded in 2006.

Lear­month Air­port near Ex­mouth has recorded 61mm to Fe­bru­ary 10, while Gi­ralia Sta­tion­recorded that in two days last week. Parabur­doo Aero recorded 115.2mm while New­man recorded 197mm to Fe­bru­ary 10.

All this wa­ter has Pil­bara res­i­dents look­ing for­ward to what is set to be a stun­ning win­ter, with wa­ter­holes full and wild flow­ers ex­pected to be in full bloom.

Videos, such as those of SumMia­ree

mitx shared to the Pil­bara News Face­book page, show the true scale of the change to our land­scape caused by the flood­ing.

The Ngurin River, the tra­di­tional name for the wa­ter­way through Roe­bourne, al­most broke its banks, peak­ing at the foot­steps of the cul­tural cen­tre over­look­ing what is usu­ally lit­tle more than a trickle. The Mait­land River south of Kar­ratha turned into a rag­ing rapid, fed by wa­ters com­ing off the Chich­ester Ranges.

These read­ers’ pho­tos will serve as a per­ma­nent re­minder of 2017, when the wet re­turned to the Pil­bara.